One of the primary challenges facing universities across the globe is the waning interest of the young in engineering and sciences. Several educators and students have indicated that an important aspect missing in science and technology education is the lack of illustration of practical uses of theoretical concepts. The use of virtual instrumentation by leading universities around the world has begun to bear fruit in bridging the gap between theory and practice. Professor Paul Dixon from California State University at San Bernardino conceptualised a system-the Educational Laboratory Virtual Instrumentation Suite (ELVIS) that helped emphasise the practical aspects of theoretical concepts in Physics.

The National Instruments Educational Laboratory Virtual Instrumentation Suite (NI ELVIS) developed in collaboration with Professor Dixon is a LabVIEW-based design and prototyping environment for Science and Engineering laboratories in universities. To spur interest in Engineering and Science, universities strive to provide hands-on and project-based education that encourages creativity and problem solving. However, educators face significant logistical challenges because instruments in traditional laboratory can be expensive, rigid and fragmented, offering only fixed functions. To overcome these challenges, National Instruments offers ELVIS as a unique, affordable and interactive platform that students can use to apply theory to real-world applications.

NI ELVIS consists of LabVIEW-based virtual instruments, a multifunction data acquisition device, a custom-designed benchtop workstation and prototyping board.

This combination provides a ready-to-use suite of common laboratory instruments including an oscilloscope, function generator, digital multi-meter and programmable power supplies along with a bode analyzer, dynamic signal analyzer and arbitrary waveform generator. Based on LabVIEW, NI ELVIS provides complete data acquisition and prototyping capabilities. The system is also ideal for integrating virtual instrumentation into academic coursework from beginner to advanced project-based classes.

Figure 1. NI ELVIS

The typical applications are in circuit design and learning analog and digital electronics, measurements in mechanical, electrical, biomedical and physics laboratories. Additionally, NI ELVIS has been used extensively in teaching data acquisition and signal conditioning, live demonstration of concepts in a lecture hall, communications and control applications for electrical and mechanical engineering.

The NI ELVIS is also used extensively in many different areas of teaching across ASEAN. It is used in the Electrical and Electronics department of Monash University in Malaysia. The Singapore Institute of Management’s Biomedical Engineering laboratory is equipped with NI ELVIS to demonstrate Biophysics concepts. In Singapore Polytechnic, ELVIS is used in the Bio-Engineering laboratories to teach students the fundamentals of bio-sensors.

“As industry adoption of virtual instrumentation for measurement, control and design grows, hands-on training in this area is becoming essential for every engineering and science student,” said Professor Archie Holmes, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at University of Texas at Austin. “NI ELVIS helps us incorporate virtual instrumentation into our curriculum by providing multiple capabilities in one compact, affordable system. With this system, we can give our students unique hands-on experience that will help them meet the design challenges they will face after graduation.”

NI ELVIS makes it easy for students to build custom circuits and interfaces. Using the removable prototyping board, students can design their own electronic circuits, signal conditioning capabilities and small electromechanical devices. The NI ELVIS workstation, LabVIEW software and the National Instruments Data Acquisition (NI DAQ) board have extensive applications in the academic disciplines of Engineering, Physical Sciences and Biological Sciences. The system is open not only in terms of software, but also its custom signal conditioning hardware.

Uses for NI ELVIS

The NI ELVIS system is well suited for teaching basic electronics and circuit design to students in electrical, mechanical and biomedical engineering. The suite offers full testing, measurement and data saving capabilities needed for such training. The removable prototype board offers students the ability to build circuits at home, thus using laboratory time more effectively. NI ELVIS instruments (e.g. bode analyser and curve tracer) offer an opportunity to teach advanced level courses in signal analysis and processing. Students can construct software filters in LabVIEW and hardware filters on the prototyping board and then compare their performance. For the first time, students have the ability to see the effects of hardware anti-aliasing filters on signals.

Mechanical engineering students can learn sensor and transducer measurements in addition to basic circuit design. The prototype board offers an ideal platform for building custom signal conditioning for various sensors and transducers. Custom sensor adapters can also be installed on the prototype board. The programmable power supply can also provide excitation for accelerometers used in strain measurements. NI ELVIS thus offers an opportunity for a mechanical engineering department to standardise its instruments on a single platform for multiple laboratories.

Biomedical engineering departments face challenges similar to those in mechanical engineering departments. A student typically learns basic electronics and builds instruments (e.g. Elektro-Kardiographie [EKG] monitor). Along with signal conditioning capabilities for the EKG sensors, the suite of instruments is also ideal for testing circuits as students build appropriate signal conditioning.

The NI ELVIS platform is an ideal electronics and circuit design trainer for Physics students. It offers a photoelectric multiplier or light detector so that students can learn about signal conditioning for common sensors. It is also possible to build high-gain, low-noise circuits on a Printed Circuit Board (PCB) and use these circuits in modern physics laboratories.

Finally NI ELVIS comes with a large number of academic resources and ready-to-use laboratory experiments. Additional courseware information in a wide variety of fields including mechatronics, digital image processing, fundamentals of analog and digital electronics and much more can be accessed from http://www.ni.com/academic/.